If you know me, you know my comfort show is Modern Family. One of my favorite parts of each holiday season is watching the seasonal episode that accompanies it.
Modern Family has a running joke about Claire being the best at Halloween out of anyone in the family, the best at playing tricks on them, and the one with the darkest sense of humor. One of my favorite running bits about this is how no one in the family ever seems to love Halloween as much as she does, even when her kids are young. She continues to decorate for Halloween and even amplifies it after the kids have grown up to make their yard even more spooky.
Here are a few of my favorite Halloween episodes from the show, since they had a new Halloween episode about every other season.
Season 6, Episode 6
Phil lets Claire take charge of Halloween decorations, expecting a yard full of corpses and a horror movie type of display. Phil, instead, decides to make it “Awesomeland”, his version of a theme park in their yard.
This childish “theme park” could otherwise be dismissed, but during this season, a new family moves in next door and announces on Halloween they are entering a decorating contest in the neighborhood for the best display. Of course, Claire, in all of her competitive nature, cannot allow Phil’s decorations to represent their family, and so she turns their yard into a haunted house at the very last minute.
This is one of the greats for me, mostly because we can see Phil’s desire for childhood come out in this episode and the ways that Claire takes Halloween so seriously.
Another part of the episode that I love is the sub-plotline of Jay and Gloria’s Halloween costumes where Jay dresses as Prince Charming and wears a wig to look more youthful for Gloria, despite Gloria loving him as he is.
My all-time favorite part of this episode is when Cam goes to Lily’s school Halloween parade when she is dressed as Waldo. Cam is wearing a “Wizard Whitebeard” costume to match Lily’s and inevitably loses her during the parade due to his struggle with finding the infamous hiding character.
Season 4, Episode 5
This episode is full of great costumes. Phil is dressed as Willy Wonka as he attempts to sell a house that Claire has turned into a house of horrors. Of course, not a scary costume from Phil, but it becomes a nightmare as Claire enters the scene.
One of my favorite parts of this episode is the fear that Gloria instills in everyone when she begins to speak without her Colombian accent and enunciates her words to “please” her family.
As a side note, I think the series, in general, could have done a better job from the beginning of not making Gloria’s accent so much of a problem for everyone else in her family. Rewatching the series now, I feel a twinge of anger whenever it’s brought up that Gloria is “hard to understand” or when they make fun of her and she is the butt of a joke.
Season 2, Episode 6
There is no doubt about my love for this episode. There are numerous reasons to love it.
First of all, Mitchell has just started at a new law firm. Already, he is nervous about fitting in with the other lawyers and after having Claire as a sister, he knows the importance of a great Halloween costume. He chooses a tight-fitting Spiderman costume and after arriving at work, discovers that he is one of three people dressed up. After deciding to change into work clothes and abandon the costume, he experiences a number of other struggles that pan out through the rest of his workday.
Later on in the episode, the entire family is over for their indoor trick-or-treat display. Cam has a history with Halloween and, in usual fashion, chooses to reveal bits and pieces of his traumatic experience as a child. It’s an episode full of laughs and good family fun.
As someone who doesn’t have any real connection to Halloween, I know that I can count on Modern Family to get me in the spirit! Happy Halloween!